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The Village Master
His story, they say has a habit of repeating itself and certainly this has been true in the case of the Ardmoyle line. Down that road marched the fruit of the marriage of Ted and Mary Corrigan, all thirteen of them. In those days it was a normal dusty country boreen, but it had its landmarks and its characters. A generation later Peter end Freda Hanberry sent their family of nine along the same rutted road, past John's Pub, the "Old School" and down Mahon's hill to Master Finan in Kingsland school. Looking back now from the vantage point of the big smoke, one notices that many of the houses along that route are sadly empty and deserted. Perhaps the fields are greener, and the cattle are fatter, but there are no more stacks of oats, no more ridges of potatoes or vegetables and gone are the great characters that were so much a part of what the late Bernie Kivlehan called ''The Kingsland Brigade".
"Finan" was an institution in my time at Kingsland school and like all great institutions he had his good points and his bad points. He often talked about his own school days and the fact that he had once asked God to change him into a goat on his way to school so that he wouldn't have to face the Master for a whole day. Indeed, there were many of us in the class who had a personal understanding and appreciation of how he felt. However, we kept our mouths shut and tried to steer the Master away from the dreaded sums. It wasn't that we all hated mathematics, but whenever he got around to this particular subject, things got a little too hot for us. So, the senior classes used their accumulated experience to distract the master’s attention from the mathematical problem on the clár dubh, to anything else under the sun in which he might have an interest. The Rosary and matters religious were our favourite, many is the day I thanked God for the Rosary!
My earliest memories from my schooldays are of groups of children straggling along the bye-roads from various directions in the morning, and meeting on the tar road. There would have been up to twenty on the Ardmoyle line, many more from the Boyle side of course there was also the Kingsland road and Tonroe line. Thirty years ago, everyone walked to school and we were always able to recognise the sound of Master Finan's car coming around Callaghan's corner and up Reilly's hill. This was the signal to quicken the step, walk in a line and show an interest in getting to school sometime that morning. The Master normally went to 8.30a.m. Mass in Boyle therefore his time of arrival at school could be accurately predicted. He was never late.
My other very clear memory from my schooldays concern the washing of the school corridor. The Master always liked to keep the school spotless, and so, each morning two of the bigger boys (Kingsland school was not an equal opportunity employer) were dispatched to wash the tiled corridor. Now, every third row of tiles was black and in order to keep the corridor as clean as possible we were instructed to "tip-toe on the blacks", the idea probably being that the dirt from our shoes didn't show on the black tiles. Even to this day if confronted by rows of coloured tiles, no matter where, my automatic inclination is to put my hand behind by back, step carefully forward on my tip toes searching out the black tiles. Old habits die hard I suppose.
Summer long ago seemed brighter and sunnier. I always remember my childhood firsts, the first time I managed to rob a bird's nest, the first fish I caught, the first time I rode a man's bicycle, the first fair I attended. These were all milestones and as I look back on those days now, I have recollections only of warm Summer days, fine weather and hard work. The tough world of Summer farming was an excellent training for any path in life. The bog for example was an institution in itself, I particularly dreaded the long days. We always looked forward to the tea and, no matter what we ate for breakfast we seemed to be hungry almost as soon as we arrived on the bog. Then there was the constant worry that the ass was going to sink in the soft spodach sooner or later. This meant that you had to empty the cart, pull out the ass, straddle him again, put the cart on him and reload the turf. And to add to the misery, chances are either the midges are eating you at every exposed point or you have to dash behind and bank every ten minutes to avoid the scattered showers. The best point of the day came when we were sent to collect our bicycles from the cut away where we had hidden them form the sun, to make our way home.
Saving the hay was a ritual in itself. I can vaguely remember Paddy Cregg arriving with two huge brown horses to mow the meadow. The smell of the freshly mown grass, taking out the "black-swart", the nose bags on the horses, was all part of the wonder for a young budding farmer. In later years however some of the wonder was taken out of the haymaking ritual and was replaced by hard work. The hay had to be turned by the rake, shook out with the fork, put into small rows and if there was the slightest threat of rain it had to be "lapped". Later the laps were again shook out with forks and the hay was "tramped" if it was fit. This meant that it was built into cocks which at some later stage would have to be plucked, raked re-headed and roped. The old bale of silage is not so bad after all.
Seldom we were kept home from school to help with the work. Once I remember being kept out of school to help with spreading the manure. We always had potatoes in the bog at the bottom of the hill. There was nothing like the bog spud we were told. And of course, you couldn't have good bog potatoes without a good covering of FYM - Farm Yard Manure. I explained to Master Finan the next day that my presence was essential, my task being to hold the ass and cart back going down the steep hill and to pull him up the hill with the empty cart. I'm afraid the subtleties of the job were lost on the Master the following day.
The amazing thing is that many of these great memories are not beginning to slip from focus and it is only when we are gathered together, perhaps at the passing of one of the many chapters I mentioned earlier that memories come flooding back. Perhaps those days were not so bad after all, perhaps the Master had many good qualities that we never saw, perhaps even schooldays were after all the best days of our lives.
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